For Better and Worse

by Margot Hunt

  I was probably being overly cautious, because although Best Buy had a selection of cell phones for sale, I instead left and headed to Walmart to buy one. I normally hated how many ugly big-box stores had sprung up along US 1, but I saw now they had their uses. I doubted that by the time Robert’s death was being investigated—if it was ever investigated as a homicide—anyone would bother scouring the security tapes of local chain stores to see if there were school parents there buying everyday items like tablets and phones. Still, it seemed like a good idea to use an abundance of caution when planning a crime that could potentially land me in prison for the rest of my life.

  I purchased a cheap prepaid flip phone at Walmart, again paying in cash, although I did have to ask the electronics clerk to unlock it off the antitheft hook it was hanging from. He didn’t seem to take any note of me at all, even whistling softly as he scanned the phone and a card to load it with minutes, and processed my payment. The whole transaction took less than ten minutes.

  I wasn’t entirely sure if I would need a phone, but I figured it was safer to get one just in case. I wouldn’t be able to take my smartphone with me when I went to kill Robert. I’d defended several cases where the police had been able to determine that my client was near the scene of the crime by subpoenaing the suspect’s GPS records from his wireless service provider.

  There was a Starbucks a mile away from the Walmart. I stopped there next. I bought a latte and took it to a table located next to a power outlet. I plugged the new tablet in, and logged on to the internet. I knew that using a public Wi-Fi connection was a risk, but I figured it was a small one. After all, I wasn’t going to run an internet search on “best way to kill someone without getting caught.”

  I had already spent most of the previous night thinking about how I wanted to kill Robert. It hadn’t taken very long to whittle down the possibilities.

  First and foremost, I wanted Robert’s death to look like a suicide. It wasn’t that I shied away from violence and bloodshed on moral grounds—this was the monster who had hurt my little boy, after all. He deserved a messy end. I had never been a violent person, but ever since Charlie told me what Robert had done to him, I had been consumed by a simmering fury I didn’t know I was capable of. I would happily slit Robert Gibbons’s throat without hesitation and watch his life bleed out of him.

  But a straight-up homicide would guarantee a police investigation. Shoreham was not exactly a hotbed of criminal activity. A murder would get a lot of attention, especially with such a notorious victim. The focus would quickly shift to the parents of one of his victims. No one knew yet that Charlie was counted among those who’d been hurt, but I couldn’t be sure that would always be the case. And besides, I didn’t want Jennifer and Peter Swain, or anyone else for that matter, to be falsely accused.

  No, if I was going to pull this off, I needed it to look like Robert Gibbons, outed as a pedophile and facing a lifetime in jail, had despaired at the ruins of his life, only to see death as the way out. The police had to believe he’d committed suicide, so that there wouldn’t be an investigation into his death.

  My next step was to narrow down how to go about killing him, and successfully make it look like a suicide. When I first decided that Robert needed to die, I had hoped that Will would help me. I had been going to the gym three or four times a week and was in decent shape, but there was no way that I—a one-hundred-forty-pound woman—would be able to move Robert’s body around on my own. He was a tall, broad man, and easily weighed well over two hundred pounds. That meant setting his death up as a hanging was out of the question, as was somehow knocking him out and then wrangling his body to his car to make it look like he’d died by carbon monoxide poisoning.

  I could shoot Robert, but making that look like a suicide would bring far too many problems—I’d have to get a gun, one that couldn’t be traced, and shoot him in a way that would fool a ballistics expert into believing the wound was self-inflicted. Besides, I didn’t have any experience with guns. It seemed like a highly risky option.

  This brought me to the favorite weapon of female murderers in the sort of old-fashioned detective stories that take place in English country homes—poison.

  But what kind of poison would I use? And exactly how was I going to administer it without Robert detecting it before he’d ingested a lethal amount? That was what I needed to figure out.

  I pulled open the search engine and typed “best drugs for committing suicide” into the search box. I took a sip of my latte, drew in a deep breath and prepared to jump down a particularly twisted cyberspace rabbit hole.

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by how many websites and message boards there were devoted to discussing methods of suicide. But the earnest and spirited discussions on favored methods were disturbing.

  Post by KatyBird on the message board ThisIstheEnd.net:

  I bought the razor blades yesterday. Last night, when I was taking a bath, I imagined what it would be like to cut into my skin. I felt so peaceful, so relieved. I think I’m almost ready. I just need to figure out when. My boyfriend will be disappointed if we miss prom. J

  Other posters responded to her post:

  BlingBling10: That’s so exciting, KatyBird! Let us know when you settle on a date.

  Nuggin: Blades, huh? I thought you were gonna go with rope.

  KatyBird: Yeah, not totally sure. Still thinking about it.

  Nuggin: That’s cool.

  PopTartlet: I’ve been trying to figure out the best date thing too. I don’t want to miss anything important, kwim?

  I blinked and read the entry again. I knew teenagers could be melodramatic and self-centered, but were they really social networking their suicides? Ready to die, but not wanting to miss out on opportunities for awesome Instagram photos? It was equal parts disturbing and sad. I checked the dates and saw that the posts had been written over a year earlier. I hoped to God it was a stage they’d all outgrown.

  Another poster, Almost Time, wrote out a long post describing his plan to kill himself using a suicide hood, which was apparently basically a large plastic bag that you placed over your head and sealed with duct tape:

  Then all you have to do is get a canister of helium and run a hose into the hood, which you use to cover your head. Once the gas is turned on, the oxygen inside the hood will eventually be replaced by the helium. Death is peaceful, and only takes about ten minutes.

  He sounded more mature and steadfast than the teenage posters had been. I clicked on his name. From his history of posts it appeared he was in his late thirties and had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few months before he began posting on the forum. His posts were melancholy but straightforward—he didn’t want to die, but since it was going to happen anyway and soon, he wanted to make a less painful exit from the earth. After near daily posts over a three-week period of time, his activity on the page had stopped abruptly in January.

  I breathed in sharply and felt tears sting my eyes. Then I shook my head, trying to shake off my sadness for this poor man. I needed to stay focused.

  I contemplated the suicide bag before reluctantly setting the idea aside. I liked that it masked the cause of death, but there were too many downsides. It would be hard to subdue Robert long enough to get the bag on over his head. And I could hardly wheel a tank of helium into his house without Robert—or one of his neighbors—noticing.

  Actually, maybe I didn’t have to worry about being seen entering the Gibbonses’ house. Robert and Venetia had opted to build a house to the west of town on several acres of land. At the time, they said they wanted to avoid having to deal with homeowners associations and zero lot lines, even if it meant a longer daily commute. Robert had kept the house after the divorce.

  I returned my attention back to the search results. There were quite a few web pages devoted to discussions about which drugs were lethal in large enough doses and how easy
to find those drugs were. The problem was how to disguise the drugs. I could grind them up and put them in something, but it would have to mask the bitter taste. I clicked and clicked again, and finally stumbled upon a page discussing the hazards of combining opiates with alcohol.

  Robert was a bourbon aficionado. If I could find a way to get him to drink a glass of bourbon laced with some sort of opiate...that might do the trick. But the question was, how?

  “Natalie?”

  I started. My head snapped up. Heart pounding, I threw an arm over the tablet.

  Laura MacMurray was looming over me, a paper cup in hand. She was short and squarely built, with cropped dark brown hair. Laura was wearing her usual uniform of a long tank-top—this one the color of a greenish bruise—over black yoga capris with flip-flops. I’d known Laura for years—our children had even attended a baby music class together—but I’d never warmed to her.

  “Laura...you startled me. Hi.” I quickly flipped the tablet over, so she wouldn’t be able to see what I was reading. Laura was exactly the sort of person who would read over my shoulder.

  “I meant to call you the other day. I accidentally hit my horn in the car line. You probably thought I was honking at you to get off your phone, or whatever it was that was distracting you, but it was just a mistake,” Laura blathered.

  “I didn’t even notice,” I lied. “But I wasn’t on my phone.”

  “Well, you know how some people are today. They can’t go five minutes without checking in on their social media feeds. I think it’s actually a really sad statement on our society these days. Everyone’s turned into a phone zombie, even the mothers.”

  “I wasn’t on my phone,” I repeated. “I was just making sure that Charlie was okay.”

  “Why? Does he have separation anxiety when he goes to school? He’s a little old for that, isn’t he? Although I suppose it does take some kids longer to mature. You can’t rush them. Quinn’s never had that problem, but she’s always been ahead of the curve. I think she has an old soul. Are you working?”

  Laura tilted her head and looked doubtfully at the tablet lying facedown on the table.

  “No, I was just reading...something.” God, I thought. Could I sound any more guilty, like I’m absolutely up to no good? Which might technically be true, but it certainly wasn’t something I wanted Laura to clue into. “The news,” I added lamely.

  “Do you mind if I sit with you for a minute while I finish my green tea?” Laura didn’t bother to wait for a response before she sat down across the table from me.

  Actually, I did mind. I minded very much. The idea of making conversation with Laura, with her odd rictus smile and smug, self-satisfied opinions on today of all days was maddening. I wanted nothing more than to tell her to fuck off and leave me alone, so I could continue to plot the murder of the monster who had hurt my child.

  But I couldn’t do that, so I forced myself to smile. “Of course not.”

  “Were you at the meeting Monday night? Could you believe your ears?”

  My pulse quickened, but I managed to keep my expression neutral. “I know. It was a lot to take in.”

  “Do you know anything about this Tate Mason? I heard he might have been the one who started the fire in the boys’ locker room last year.”

  Laura leaned forward eagerly, her tongue darting out to wet her chapped lips, greedy for information. Another time, I might have found it amusing that even Laura, with her gluten-free diet, conscious parenting and yoga obsession wasn’t above engaging in a little toxic gossip.

  Right now, I just wanted to slap her across her smug face.

  “No, I don’t really know anything about him.”

  “Really? I thought you were neighbors with his parents. Or, foster parents.”

  “The Swains. They live in my subdivision, but I don’t know them well. Just from school. And Tate’s a few years older than Charlie.”

  “I keep hearing that he’s a very troubled kid. Violent, even. Alison Rombould’s daughter is in his grade and she said that he acts out in class all the time. Apparently, he even swore at Mrs. Loughlin once. And—” Laura lowered her voice to a stage whisper “—Alison called Principal Gibbons to complain about how disruptive Tate was being. So that might have given him a motive to lie about Robert...you know.” Laura looked around back behind her. “Touching him.”

  My stomach twisted with anger and disgust. It was bad enough that Tate had been victimized by an opportunistic predator. The last thing he needed or deserved was for his character to be gleefully smeared by school mothers. God knew what else Tate had been through in his short life. The hardest thing Laura had to deal with every day was striking the proper pose in hot yoga class. Her ghoulish interest sickened me.

  “I doubt that Tate was motivated by revenge,” I said evenly.

  “It’s just a theory.” Laura frowned. She’d always hated being contradicted. “That’s the problem with letting kids like that into a school like Franklin.”

  My eyebrows arched. “You mean foster kids?”

  “No. I mean children who need extra help. It’s a small school. They just don’t have the resources to handle troubled kids like Tate Mason.”

  “I should get back to the office.” I began to gather my things.

  “Did Will tell you that Hugh and I ran into him at The Reef?”

  “What? Oh...no. He didn’t mention it.” I felt a twinge of unease. Will went to The Reef without me? It was an Asian-Floridian fusion restaurant, and had been one of our favorite places though we hadn’t been there in a long while. “When was that?”

  “Last week. We were sneaking in a midweek date night. I think Will was there with some work colleagues?”

  “Oh, right. They’ve been interviewing candidates for an associate’s position at the firm.”

  Work. Of course that’s why he was at The Reef without me midweek. I was actually surprised at the relief that flooded through me. In the wake of Charlie’s revelation, I hadn’t wasted a single moment of time worrying about whether Will was having an affair. In fact, I’d give anything to return to my previous life—just yesterday—where any of that mattered. My husband’s wandering attention, worries that we weren’t putting aside enough money for Charlie’s college fund, a client spitting in my face. An imperfect life, but one where my son had not been hurt.

  “I was just surprised you weren’t there with him.”

  “Why?” I regretted the word as soon as it left my mouth. The last thing I wanted was to give her an opening. “Work meetings are work, even when they’re held at nice restaurants. I try to sit them out whenever I can.”

  “Well, I guess every marriage is different, but Hugh doesn’t like to go out in the evenings without me. It’s sort of sweet, actually.”

  Rage flared up, so hot and angry, it took me by surprise. What was wrong with this woman? Why was she so fucking smug about everything?

  “Hugh’s an exterminator, isn’t he?”

  Laura stiffened. “He owns a pest extermination business, yes.”

  I waved away this distinction, clearly so important to her. “Well, I don’t imagine he has many business dinners to attend, does he?”

  Anger was making me careless. There was no benefit to picking a fight with Laura, I knew, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. Maybe it was the strain of the past twenty-four hours.

  Laura had stopped smiling. “I just thought you might be interested to know that Will was sitting next to a very attractive woman that he seemed to be paying a lot of attention to. Is that one of his coworkers? Or maybe it was the wife of one of his partners. Someone who doesn’t prefer to ‘sit them out.’”

  To punctuate her point, Laura lifted her hands and made air quotes around the phrase.

  I stood abruptly. “I have to get back to work, Laura. Enjoy your tea.”

  I swept my new tablet in
to my bag and turned to stride out of the coffee shop.

  Laura MacMurray, I thought. Fuck her, and everyone like her.

  Chapter 11

  I left Starbucks and headed to the local wine and liquor superstore to buy a bottle of Blanton’s bourbon. I remembered Robert once mentioning that it was his favorite. After a long search, I finally found a bottle tucked up on the top shelf at the end of the whiskey and bourbon aisle. I brought it up to the front of the store to check out. The cashier was a hipster guy in his twenties with sleeve tattoos and an elaborately manicured goatee.

  “Nice,” he said, nodding his head approvingly. “You really know your bourbon.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “Impressive. We don’t sell much of this. Only the true connoisseurs buy it.”

  My pulse sped up and my breath caught in my chest. Damn, the last thing I wanted was for the cashier to remember selling a particular brand of bourbon. But, no, it was probably fine, I told myself. What were the chances that the police would ever know to talk to this particular cashier, much less for him to remember one of the hundreds, or even thousands, of customers he’d checked out? It was one thing to be careful, but there was no need to be paranoid.

  “It’s for my husband.” I forced myself to smile. “He’s a big fan.”

  “Man’s got good taste.”

  The cashier rang up the bourbon. I paid for it with another chunk of my cash.

  “Have a great day,” he said, handing me my change. “Enjoy.”

  “Thanks.”

  My errands finally completed, I drove straight to my office. As I headed over the bridge that arced over the Intracoastal Waterway and drove toward downtown Shoreham, I again considered the chances of getting caught. If the police would ever be able to build a case against me. I’d spent most of the night before running over the possibilities, trying to calculate the risk.